A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever. The following notice applies to the software and data as described below and in any drawings hereto: Copyright (copyright) 2002, NCR Corp. All Rights Reserved.
The present invention relates to the automatic identification of local devices in an electronic environment. More specifically, the present invention is directed to automatically identifying local devices in a home network.
Processing capabilities are currently being built into a number of consumer electronic devices/appliances, such as stereos, microwaves, air conditioners, furnaces, televisions, refrigerators, Video Cartridge Recorders (VCRs), Digital Versatile Disks (DVDs) recorders/players, lights, fans, telephones, facsimile machines, video cameras, Compact Disks (CDs) recorders/players, toasters, printers, scanners, personal digital assistants (PDAs), computers, ovens, and the others. These consumer devices are now being equipped with processors, memory, receivers, and transmitters. This additional hardware combined with minimal software permits a consumer""s electronic devices/appliances to be more intelligent and integrated within a consumer""s home to the consumer""s main personal computer.
However, in order to fully integrate these electronic devices/appliances within a consumer""s home to form a home network, the electronic devices/appliances have to be uniquely identifiable to the main personal computer. Conventionally, to achieve integration within the home network each device/appliance required a unique address, such as an Internet Protocol (IP) address. The unique address permits the main personal computer to manage and communicate with individual devices/appliances. But, providing a unique IP address becomes a problem for the consumer, since the number of devices/appliances could far exceed the number of available IP addresses on a network hub used by the consumer to interface with the main personal computer.
Moreover, the devices/appliances have to be equipped with the appropriate software to receive or identify itself using any assigned IP address. Further, the main personal computer needs to be manually configured to recognize each device/appliance using the appropriate IP address. The entire process of integrating the devices/appliances within the home to the main personal computer is laborious. Additionally, when old devices/appliances are eliminated from the home network, the IP addresses are not easily recycled within the home network. In fact, in many instances, each device/appliance within the home network is reconfigured with a new IP address when one device or appliance is removed from the home network.
Some solutions have tried to solve this problem by embedding hardware and software into the devices/appliances that permit the devices/appliances to communicate with the main personal computer within the network using existing electrical power lines within the home. Thus, existing Alternating Current (AC) wiring within the home is used to communicate between the devices/appliances and the main personal computer. Modulating signals on the electrical power lines at designated frequencies permit the main personal computer to uniquely identify and communicate with each of the devices/appliances participating in the home network. The signals can include commands and information that are defined within fields of the signals or are encoded in a standard protocol formats, such as X10 protocol format.
Yet, to implement existing techniques that utilize existing electrical power lines for communication with devices/appliances is expensive, since each device/appliance needs to be equipped with the appropriate hardware and software to communicate over the electrical power lines. In some cases, this may not be feasible with smaller appliances that are incapable of housing the appropriate hardware. And, in other cases, it is impractical to unduly inflate the cost of a device/appliance to include the necessary hardware and software. Moreover, since the appropriate hardware and software is coupled to the devices/appliances, it cannot be reused with another device/appliance that needs such hardware and software to communicate in the home network.
Other techniques have sought to tie consumer devices/appliances together with a main personal computer by using the existing phone lines within a home. Yet, with these techniques each device/appliance must be connected to a phone line within the home. In some instances, a device or appliance may not be located within the home near an existing phone outlet making these techniques undesirable to a consumer. Moreover, the devices/appliances must be equipped with a port to accept a phone line, which is used for communication to a main personal computer of the home network.
As is apparent, there exists a need for providing techniques and devices that can more readily and flexibly permit devices/appliances within a consumer""s home to be tied together in a home network with a main personal computer. Additionally, unique identification hardware and software associated with the devices/appliances should be decoupled from the devices/appliances. Moreover, automatic identification of devices/appliances is needed so that no manual configuration of the main personal computer is required before the devices/appliances become usable within the home network.
In various embodiments of the present invention techniques are devices are described to automatically identify local devices. The local device can be intelligent appliance within a home network that is interfaced to a central processing device (e.g., personal computer, portable computer, and the like). The techniques and devices of the present invention permit the local device to be automatically identified and to communicate with the processing device without the need to manually program the processing device to recognize the local device in advance of any communication between the processing device and the local device.
More specifically and in one embodiment of the present invention, a method to automatically identify a local device is presented. The local device is interfaced with an adapting device. The adapting device receives a unique transmission frequency from the processing device. The unique transmission frequency is used by the local device in receiving and sending messages from and to the processing device. Furthermore, the adapting device initially communicates the unique transmission frequency to the local device.
Another embodiment of the present invention, a local device identification system is provided. The local device identification system includes a local device, an adapting device, and a processing device. The adapting device acquires from the processing device a unique transmission frequency for use in communications between the processing device and the local device. Furthermore, the adapting device acquires from the local device local device type that is communicated to the processing device upon initialization.
In yet another embodiment of the present invention an adapting device to identify a local device is described. The adapting device includes a receptacle for receiving a power cord of a local device and a plug that connects to an electrical outlet. Moreover, the adapting device includes a transceiver for transmitting and receiving messages to and from the local device. Furthermore, the adapting device includes a controller that sends an initialization signal over an electrical power line connected to the electrical outlet via the plug to a processing device and receives an initialization from the processing device over the electrical line that identifies a unique transmission frequency for the controller to use or communicate to local device. Also, the controller uses the transceiver to acquire a local device type from the local device and sends the local device type to the processing device.
Still other aspects of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from the following description of various embodiments. As will be realized the invention is capable of other embodiments, all without departing from the present invention. Accordingly, the drawings and descriptions are illustrative in nature and not intended to be restrictive.